Kismet is an 802.11 layer2 wireless network detector, sniffer, and intrusion detection system. Kismet will work with any wireless card which supports raw monitoring (rfmon) mode, and (with appropriate hardware) can sniff 802.11b, 802.11a, 802.11g, and 802.11n traffic. Kismet also supports plugins which allow sniffing other media such as DECT.

Kismet identifies networks by passively collecting packets and detecting standard named networks, detecting (and given time, decloaking) hidden networks, and infering the presence of nonbeaconing networks via data traffic.

Fri Jan 13 2012 - Follow the Kismet twitter feed here for development updates & information.

Wed Jan 04 2012 - Major Kismet internal rewrite well underway, bringing wireless-neutral support for logs and display of any type of wireless device you have the hardware for Kismet to use (wifi, bluetooth, zigbee, etc). Follow the developer blog and SVN for more info!

Tue Aug 09 2011 - Spectools 2011-08-R1 is out, with support for the Wispy DBXv2, 24Xv2, and the Ubertooth. Get it at the spectools page

Thu May 26 2011 - Respun the 2011-03 packages for Ubuntu to make Natty stop whining. Additionally, defined a repository, so you can point at it for automatic updates in the future, see the download page for details.

Thu Apr 07 2011 - Renewed certificate for www.kismetwireless.net

Mon Apr 04 2011 - Kismet-2011-03-R2 released at the usual spot. This is a bugfix release to fix a segv in Kismet when running as a drone server (null ptr de-ref due to internal api drift, nothing exciting)

Tue Mar 29 2011 - Kismet-2011-03-R1 released at the download page. This release fixes compatibility with the latest version of libncurses, fixes setuid problems on some installs of the Ubuntu packages, slightly more accurate GPS averaging, some compile-time fixes, and the beginning of the new phy-neutral tracking system.

Wed Jan 19 2011 - Kismet-2011-01-R1 released, at the download page. Sporting a ruby network API example, several ruby-based tools for client reference, per-network and per-client per-source signal levels, GPS logging in PPI using the new cross-vendor standard, client fixes, mac80211 fixes, proper handling of 802.11d multi-range values, WPA migration mode detection, and packaging helper scripts, it's time to upgrade!

Fri Apr 23 2010 - Spectools-2010-04-R1 released, find it here. Bugfix release with fixes for lots of little quirks, crashes, and compile problems.

802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11a, 802.11n sniffing
Standard PCAP file logging (Wireshark, Tcpdump, etc)
Client/Server modular architecture
Multi-card and channel hopping support
Runtime WEP decoding
Tun/Tap virtual network interface drivers for realtime export of packets
Hidden SSID decloaking
Distributed remote sniffing with Kismet drones
XML logging for integration with other tools
Linux, OSX, Windows, and BSD support (devices and drivers permitting)

For more detailed development information than the changelog or news provides, general wireless info and link-whorery, and other stuff, check out the development blog here.

You can also follow Kismet development updates on Twitter here.

Presentations from various talks I've given are here.

Screenshots of the Panels UI and GPSMap mapping tool are here.

Stop by #kismet on irc.freenode.net.

The open source tools for the WiSPY Spectrum Analyzer are on the WiSPY page here